NEW DELHI: A Delhi court has rejected the pleas of former railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi seeking over 1,600 unrelied documents to prepare their defence in the land-for-jobs case trial, saying they were designed to “condemn the trial to a maze at the very outset.”
Special judge Vishal Gogne underlined that providing these documents en bloc would not only “place the cart before the horse” but also throw the judicial process into “complete disarray.”
He also dismissed the pleas of two other accused— Lalu’s personal secretary R K Mahajan and ex-general manager of railways, Maheep Kapoor. Unrelied documents are materials seized by investigating agencies but not relied on in the prosecution complaint.
The case relates to Group D appointments in the West Central Zone of the Indian Railways in Jabalpur during Lalu’s tenure as the railway minister between 2004 and 2009 in return for land parcels gifted or transferred by the recruits in the names of his family or associates.